Internet filters are active everywhere - Flickr is banned in Iran & UAE, BBC & Wikipedia are blocked in China, Blogspot blogs are banned in Pakistan, YouTube & Photobucket are prohibited for US army overseas while social sites like Bebo, MySpace or Facebook may be banned in your office.
Some companies even block access to mail websites like Yahoo or GMail under the pretext of security.
In the past, we have discussed atleast a dozen methods to help you access blocked websites that are banned in your office, school or by the government of your country. Here's a new method for unblocking websites - you'll probably enjoy it more than the previous hacks because it takes the geekiness out of the whole process and make it extremely easy to access blocked URLs.
Opera provides a free online tool called Opera Mini Simulator that emulates the Opera mobile phone browser on your desktop computer. The tool is done in java and is quite popular among web designers for testing website layouts on mobile phone devices without actually using a mobile phone.
As you probably guessed it by now, this Opera Browser Simulator can also be used for accessing web pages that may be blocked on your computer. Since the requests are made via the Opera.com website, they would easily bypass the local filtering.
To open any site in Opera, just append that site address to the following URL and start browsing.
http://www.operamini.com/demo/?url=[URL] - example
The Opera Simulator can even be used for secure sites that require cookies - for instance, you can check your Hotmail emails via Opera. Though you are restricted to the tiny 200x200 screen of Opera simulator, it's still a very handy tool. [Opera link from Rupesh]
Opera recently launched version 4 of the Mini simulator that offers a better browsing experience than the previous version. You can access v4.0 of Mini simulator here. The above video demo was created in this version.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/unblock-all-restricted-websites-with.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org



Reader Comments
Blogspot used to be blocked in Pakistan but not anymore.
Written on 29/6/07 11:08 AM
Simply and ingeniously! thanks
Written on 29/6/07 2:31 PM
amit too good site..:)
blogspot is even blocked in my office too..i can now use it using opera web..:)
Written on 29/6/07 10:13 PM
This tip will not help in offies where downloading and installing new software is blocked.
Written on 30/6/07 12:40 PM
Vishnu - the opera simulator is browser based. As long as you have the Java runtime, you should be able to access any site that's blocked in your office using this trick.
Written on 30/6/07 12:49 PM
Its not working in my office.......
"security error: network access is not permitted."
Written on 2/7/07 5:18 AM
blogspot is still banned in indian. atleast by my ISP. I am frm mumbai and i use local cablewala net. when i told them abt this block they said its block by government. is it right?
Written on 4/7/07 10:56 PM
When i tried to install the opera web browser it said that the user32.dll has been replaced by shell32.dll,plz contact ur vendor for dll.
i don't know what should i do,plz reply to me ASAP
Written on 6/7/07 10:29 AM